[Sussex] [OT] Solaris and Hardware

[Steven Dobson]

Rob

On Sat, 2006-03-18 at 14:08 +0000, Rob Malpass wrote:
> 1) I've just acquired (generous office chucking stuff out) a Sun Ultra 5 
> workstation - but I've never played with one before and my solaris is rusty:
> 1a) How do I determine its HD size?   Note it's been formatted with Solaris 
> 8 but I don't know if all HDD has been used.   No idea about Sparc BIOS - 
> any ideas?

The BIOS on sparcs is call Open Boot Prompt (OBP).  IIRC you get a breif
"ok" prompt before the system auto boots.

Type help here - it works, but of find out which SCSI hardware is
attached you can type "scsi probe" or something like that - my OBP is
rusty as I haven't used it in years.

>    Also, is du still the best way of determining how much free 
> space there is?

No, use df(1) to find out how much free space there is on the system.

> 2) Networking.   I have two broadband connections via two routers on the 
> same network.   Wanadoo have just axed their news server (without telling 
> us) so I can't send usenet messages except by paying.   However ntlworld (my 
> other ISP) still have one.   Trouble is, if I switch my settings to shove 
> all traffic through ntlworld, I can't send mail from Wanadoo (because not 
> Wanadoo subnet).   Catch 22 - if I shove all my stuff through Wanadoo - no 
> access to ntlworld's news server (wrong subnet).   I realise I could just 
> use one PC for news, one for mail etc but that's a bit of a faff which got 
> me thinking...
> 
> Way back when I didn't have a router I had two NICs in one box - one for the 
> home LAN, one for the cablemodem (that's how long ago it was).   What's to 
> stop me connecting a second NIC in my main box, configuring one for Wanadoo 
> and the other for ntlworld.   Anyone know what would happen?   Would it know 
> automatically where to route traffic?

If you set your default gateway to one router or the other then you are
telling the system to route traffic that way regardless.

What you need to do is run a routing deamon of some kind - there are a
number about and I think two routing protocols.  You will also need your
routers to run routing software too.  Can they.

The routing software sends out (broadcasts) information about the links
to other networks that they have, and the costs of using that link.
This information is used by other computers on the network to determine
the route to use to send it's packets.

Steve

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